Grandmother Of Slain NJ Toddler: System Failed Her (VIDEO)

The mother of a toddler killed in New Jersey last week sought help from the state to protect her from the girl’s father, who’s charged with killing the 2-year-old by tossing her into a creek while she was still strapped in her car seat. But the toddler’s maternal grandmother said the state’s child-protection system failed her.

“She tried to get help and nobody helped her,” Michelle Simmons, the grandmother, told The Associated Press on Wednesday, a day after Arthur Morgan III was arrested in San Diego on murder charges. “That was so wrong.”

Tierra Morgan-Glover’s body was found partially submerged in a creek near a roadway overpass in Shark River Park in Wall Township, N.J., about 20 miles north of her Lakehurst home. Her cause of death was listed as “homicidal violence, including submersion in water.”

Prosecutors would not say whether authorities believe the girl was thrown from a vehicle into the creek, or whether she was carried into the park and placed in the water.